Today's vehicles are provided with passenger restraint devices, such as inflatable airbags, which are mounted in various locations within the vehicle, including within the steering wheel.
Sensors mounted at appropriate locations within the vehicle provide a signal to an inflation device when a predetermined amount of force contact is made with another object. The inflation device generates or supplies a quantity of gas to inflate the airbag and thereby cushion the forward movement of the driver of the vehicle and resulting from a front collision.
While airbags have proven to be effective in saving people's lives by minimizing injuries during a front vehicle collision, it has been found that in certain circumstances the airbag inflation device may be armed, but may not have gone off. This armed stated lasts for a predetermined period of time, such as two minutes, before the inflation device resets itself to an inactive state.
Frequently, in serious collisions, the driver is trapped within the surrounding vehicle body and literally, the vehicle body must be cut away from the driver in order to remove the driver from the vehicle. The so-called “jaws of life” are used in such a situation. A further complication in vehicle collisions is that an emergency person, such as a fireman, E.M.S., etc., may be required to attend to a driver trapped within a vehicle until the vehicle sheet metal is cut away or removed to enable the driver to be removed from the vehicle. Such emergency persons may be required to give resuscitation, C.P.R., or other medical assistance until the driver can be removed from the vehicle and attended to in a more adequate facility, such as a hospital, E.M.S. vehicle, etc.
In such a circumstance, the emergency person's head can be situated between the airbag in the vehicle steering wheel and the driver's head. This places the emergency persons head in a precarious position, particularly where the airbag inflation sensor may have been activated, but, for some reason, the inflation device has not yet activated to inflate the airbag.
In the event that the airbag inflates under its considerable force and speed when the emergency person's head is between the airbag and the driver's head, the emergency person's head will be forced into the driver's head, thereby creating the potential for serious injury to the emergency person as well as to the driver.
One attempt to address this problem is an emergency service device in the form of a circular steel plate with two large hooks protruding from an upper portion. The rear side of the steel plate is fitted with a series of triangle deflators which engage and rip open the airbag. The main body of the steel plate is slotted to accommodate the adjustable placement of a secondary inner body in the form of a rectangular steel plate with two hooks protruding from a lower portion. When assembled together, the upper and lower portions of the two steel plates can be adjusted to accommodate different steering wheel dimensions. A tensioning knob extends through the circular plate and allows adjustment of the lower hooks on the inner plate. Once the hooks are securely in place, the tensioning knob is tightened. A dust cover is fastened around the steering wheel and the plate/hook assembly and tightened in place about the steering column by a strapping band. Ventilation openings are provided between the inner surface of the dust cover and the steering column when the dust cover strap is tightened.
However, this prior attempt at an airbag arrestor addresses the aforementioned problems with a complicated, multi-part device which requires several attachment steps and a tightening operation to secure the main device in place, and an additional installation step to add the dust cover. This takes time and can be a cumbersome task in the typically confined space existing in a crushed vehicle after a collision. At the same time, the dust cover in this device provides only a dust containment enclosure for the smoke and debris emitted by the airbag module during airbag inflation. The dust cover is not intended to suppress the entire airbag inflation as it is only provided as a dust and debris control enclosure.
Thus, it would be desirable to alleviate these potential problems. It would also be desirable to provide a device which contains the inflation of a vehicle airbag without significant expansion of the airbag. It would also be desirable to provide an airbag containment device which can be easily employed by an emergency person, preferably by one hand. It would also be desirable to provide an airbag containment device which can be repeatedly used in many emergency situations.